


Embrace the Dark

by Crime_Scene



Series: Lost in Thoughts All Alone [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (I mean it's kinda canon compliant whump but still), F/M, Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest AU, Kidnapping, M/M, Pining Shiro (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron) Whump, Slow Burn, Torture, childhood friends to enemies to friends to lovers, no need to know about fire emblem to read
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-13 17:05:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16022231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crime_Scene/pseuds/Crime_Scene
Summary: After all that happened, Shiro had thought he'd never be able to see how Keith had grown after all those years separated, but he just did, he has seen him.And he's beautiful.He's also, however, wearing the enemy's armor.or: Shiro gets captured by the nohrians at a young age and trained to become the Champion, and he never thought he'd get to see his best friend again.





	Embrace the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Oof, here it is, my first try at posting multi-chapter at AO3, it was an idea that I honestly didn't think would get that long until suddenly I have 30k words sitting in my document. Hope you like it!  
> You can all thank my wondrous friend whom I love dearly Tae (found in tumblr at @roxolotl) for betaing this and also helping me decide for plot paths alongside my other two wonderful friends Aria (tumblr: @literaryaria) and Oliver (twitter: @olibyuls).  
> Now that that's outta the way, enjoy!

Life used to be good.

It was until that fateful day when twelve year old Shiro was walking alongside his best and only friend Keith through the alleyways behind the Hoshidan Market.

"Come on Shiro, move faster!" Keith smirked as he said while he continued running through bends and turns in the narrow alleys "You really have to see this, you're gonna love it!"

"Why do you have to keep it so secret, Keith?" Shiro rolled his eyes when Keith only shrugged as a response. He did his best keeping up with Keith, which is very hard considering Keith is the fastest kid in the orphanage.

"Come on, Shiro, what's that you always say to me? 'Patience yields focus'?"

"No fair! Why do I have to be patient when you can just tell me what we're going to see?" Shiro raised his voice, faux outraged, knowing that when Keith uses Shiro's grandpa's saying against him it's because there's no way to change his mind.

As they were moving through the bends however, they heard a sound coming from behind, and both stop their running and turn their heads.

"Shiro... Did you hear that?" Keith said, side-eyeing Shiro while trying to find the source of the sound to no avail, the only things the could be seen were the closed windows and the clotheslines filled with drying laundry.

"Keith, I think we should get ba-" but Shiro never got to finish his sentence, because suddenly a pair of arms was grabbing him from behind, surrounding his chest like some kind of twisted hug.

"Keith!" Shiro screamed, but suddenly there was a piece of cloth with an awful taste around his mouth while the other arm was pulling him backwards.

"Shiro!" Keith started moving towards them frantically until a shuriken flew past his face. He quickly sidestepped the projectile on instinct, but not quickly enough, the shuriken carving a gash down on his right cheek. Shiro wasn't able to see how much blood it drew from him though because at the next moment they're flying (the ninja must have been scaling the walls of the buildings, Shiro later realized).

The last thing Shiro hears before he feels an overpowering desire to sleep was "I can't believe Haggar truly paid this much just to kidnap an orphan." and then all he remembered was the darkness.

When Shiro finally wakes up, he's in a cell. A dank, dark, empty -besides himself-, cell. And the first thing he hears is one that he'd later come to hate, the sound of incredibly sharp fingernails scratching on a wall.

"So you're finally awake," the source of the sound said, which Shiro would discover to be a woman with completely white hair, and malicious eyes that shine bright under her hood.

"Who... W-Who are you? W-where am I?" Shiro said as the incredibly frightening aura of the woman starts to affect him.

"You can call me Haggar, child, and this is my castle. You're my newest and most important prisoner," the woman, Haggar, replied easily with a tone that would almost be motherly if it weren't for the way her lips made an awful turn and she was smiling wickedly at him.

"W-what are you going to do to me? W-Where's Keith?" his voice took a desperate edge as it started raising in volume, and he scooted to the farthest edge of the cell away from Haggar.

"Do not worry child, nothing will be done to you... yet," she explains, which doesn't actually explain anything to Shiro at all. She must notice him opening his mouth to ask something else before she interrupts, "You're too young to do what you were brought here for." As if that would be enough to quiet him.

However, Shiro kept quiet when he saw her eyes squinting at him, waiting for him to say something else. It was enough for him to forget what he was going to ask.

That's when Shiro's new life started. It was incredibly boring and almost suffocating: wake up (after usually sleeping less than 6 hours), eat whenever food was brought to him, bathe whenever he was taken to the showers, and use the lifts and the running tracks in some kind of gym whenever he was ordered to (apparently he was going to need to be strong and fast for whatever they needed him?). Sometimes they would give him an axe and make him train with it, more often than not ending with him bruised; he could even hear sometimes the pained screams of the other prisoners while being tortured in a room Haggar or the guards hadn't taken him into yet.

Sometimes he could hear the guards and even some prisoners in the gym talking as if they thought he couldn't hear them.

"Apparently her Majesty is going to take that kid to the Arena when he's of age."

"I heard once in the mess hall that the child was brought in by the witch because he has a high amount of quintessence running in his bloodline."

"Someone told me that the kid is going to be turned into Haggar's greatest weapon."

Whenever Shiro couldn't get himself to sleep, he would turn those words in his mind trying to make sense of them. What is the Arena and why does Haggar need him there? What is quintessence and how did she even know that about Shiro? How would Haggar even turn him into a weapon when he is just a human?

Those questions would burn in his mind a lot of the time, but nothing would burn as much as the time when Shiro was 13 and starting to get desperate, so when the guards in the gym weren't looking, he tried to exit from one of the windows, only to discover too late that another guard was already waiting for him on the other side, grabbing him forcefully and taking him to the room he had dreaded to enter and where the screams could be heard.

"Put him on the table," he could hear someone say, even as it was distorted from the mask over their face. He tried to struggle for a bit on the guard's hold to no avail.

"So look who has finally tried to escape." Haggar's voice suddenly was heard in the room. Shiro's fear tripled and he started fighting against the ropes the guard was starting to loop through his wrists and ankles; he could already feel the burn of the ropes scratching against his skin.

"Don't even try to escape, child, or you're going to make this worse on yourself," was the only thing Haggar said before she used a spell on him and the only thing Shiro could feel was pain.

She would stop every once in a while to give him a small moment of false relief when suddenly the pain would begin again. He'd try to beg but the only thing that could leave his mouth where the screams and whines and cries that he would make, and then, after what felt like years or even centuries, Haggar would stop and order the guards to untie him and take him to his cell with no trace of kindness.

"Wait." Haggar ordered, right as the guard in front of him started opening the door.

"Bring the child to me, stay behind," she demanded, so the guards pushed him onto where Haggar was standing, unmoving and menacing, while - someone - with a horrible mask styled like a bird’s beak and a robe that extended all the way to the floor stayed behind her. They seemed like two robed Gargoyles that had ran out of water.

"I've sent my people to learn some details for me," she said, her eyes almost completely obscured by her robe "I discovered something... or should I say, someone, very important to you." As soon as Haggar said the word 'someone' Shiro's eyes widened and he knew just exactly who she was talking about.

"Keith Kogane," Shiro froze up. "The son of a man who died in the war fighting and whose name was never registered in the royal files of Hoshido due to his poverty...the Hoshidan secretary never bothered to register him," she started, slowly walking towards him, and Shiro wanted to run but he was completely frozen by this moment. "And of a woman who left him, left them both, to work for King Alfor in an undercover team of traitorous wolfskin, the Blade of Marmora." 

Haggar was standing right in front of Shiro now, her soulless and menacing eyes boring into him. "He and you met in the orphanage when you were 8 and he was 5, the only person you have ever been able to rely on after also losing your parents, this time to a terrorist attack by the vegetable farms in Hoshido, and your only friend." Shiro couldn't move, he couldn't breathe. He was already feeling the cold sweat running down his back.

"He's the most and only important person to you in this life, isn't he?" Haggar's voice turned mocking, and Shiro's blood was ice and boiling at the same time.

"Don't you dare do anything to him!" Shiro screamed, his voice cracking with the unshed tears and the lump in his throat he was trying to hide, and Haggar grinned, victorious.

"If you don't want me to do anything to him," she warned, her mocking tone turning threatening instantaneously, "then you won't try to escape ever again, because if you ever leave this castle I will make sure my people find Keith first, and then return him back to you to see him broken." Her voice left no space for jest as her eyes looked right into his soul. "Are we clear?" she asked, her tone as firm as before.

"Y-yes, Your Majesty" Shiro heard himself say, but he was numb and the feeling (or lack of it) was still there as the guards took him back to his cell. How was Haggar able to discover all of that? Keith had told him about the Blade of Marmora after 3 years of breaking walls down, and he discovered it because he saw Keith's mother's blade that he kept like a teddy bear.

_ "What is that?" Shiro asked and Keith had not been fast enough to hide the blade under the pillow before Shiro could see it. _

_ "It is... A knife," Keith replied, unhelpfully, and Shiro waited a while for Keith to elaborate before noticing Keith was not planning on doing that. _

_ "But... Whose is it?" Shiro asked patiently and without pushing Keith, already knowing that if Keith wants to tell him something, he will, and trying to force it out of him will make him clam up even more. _

_ "It is mine, now," he said, giving some emphasis into the word 'now', they were getting somewhere. _

_ "Now?" Shiro inquires, sitting down next to Keith who is lying down on his bed, looking only at the knife. While Shiro waited for Keith to gather himself, he took a look at the knife, noticing the purple markings at the hilt and discovering their similarities with wolfskin language... Which is strange, considering the wolfskin reside in Mount Garou, in Nohr. _

_ "It was... my mom's..." Keith finally said after sitting up and leaning against the bed frame while still looking down at the knife, his voice taking an almost breathless tone. Shiro had to hone in on the sound to hear what Keith was saying, but then he looked up and looked at Shiro with a mix of melancholy and fire in his eyes as he spoke up more determinedly. _

_ "She... Left. When I was 2 years old, my father explained to me months before he went to war that she had went on a very important mission with a group called the Blade of Marmora. They are made up of wolfskin men, women, and those who are neither who go against the Nohrian Crown's desires and have fled to Hoshido for a chance at tearing down the monarchy that has done so many immoral things." _

_ "Now that you know, are you going to tell the nuns that I have nohrian blood, then? Are you going to leave me?" His voice was steady and calm, but the trembling of his hands betrayed his true feelings and Shiro now finally understood why Keith had kept it from him all this time. _

_ "Keith, what? No! I would never do that, you're my friend... my best friend! I would never judge you just from the blood you carry," Shiro said, and the tension in Keith's shoulders relaxed considerably. "Besides, I have the mentality that the monarchs of a nation don't define the entire population, and the Blade of Marmora team you just talked to me about seems like a perfect example of that." Keith now looked at him dubiously, as if he didn't believe him, but the knot on his shoulders had completely relaxed by now. Shiro felt relief at Keith's admission and put his arm around his shoulders. _

_ "I'm sorry," Shiro whispered almost unwillingly, looking down at his lap. Keith looked up at him confused and Shiro had to raise his voice a bit, even if it was a bit garbled with emotion. "I-I'm sorry that your mom left you, but Keith, I assure you she loved you... And probably still loves you to this day." He looked up to Keith to find him smiling softly with shining eyes. _

_ "Don't worry about it, Takashi." Keith's use of Shiro's real name reserved only for the most serious of moments, and it made Shiro's breath catch, just a little. "It was a long time ago, and I'm starting to get over it... Besides, one day when I work at the army with you, I might be able to ask to see my mother and she... She might want to see me too." _

_ The uncertainty in Keith's voice made something in Shiro break and he unwittingly spoke up, a bit harsher than intended. "I'm sure she'll want to see you, Keith! And if she doesn't then she's dumb and doesn't know what she's missing." Keith's eyes widened for a second, but then went back to normal and what widened instead was his smile, which made Shiro look down and stare at it before catching himself and turning his head away, blushing. _

_ "Come on, Shiro," Keith said, his voice back to its normal tone again. Shiro looked up to see him standing up from the bed and stretching his hand. "I'm sure the nuns are finishing dinner, we have to get to the tables to find a nice spot." Shiro took his hand without even thinking about it and stood up with him. _

_ "Race you to the tables?" Shiro said smirking, his hand unwilling to let Keith's go. _

_ "You're on," Keith replied easily and they both ran downstairs, their hands still clasped to each other. _

Shiro wasn't able to sleep, thinking about Keith and the danger he'd put him through if he dared defy Haggar ever again, and wondering how she'd even known about their origins.

\---

Every once in a while starting since he was 14, a girl with wolf ears who looked nothing more than 3 years younger than him would stand by his cell and watch him. At first Shiro felt creeped out, but then he noticed the girl's eyes weren't malicious or mocking, but analytic. After a while of being observed Shiro began to feel like a caged animal observed by scientists and decided to speak up.

"Who are you?" was the only question Shiro could think at the moment.

"I'm Acxa," she replied, not leaving room for any doubts about it.

"What are you doing here?" Shiro inquired, curious, wanting to know more about this weird and mysterious girl, she kind of reminded him of Keith when he first met him in that sense.

"I'm watching you," she said, as if it wasn't obvious already, and when Shiro noticed she didn't want to explain anymore he was gesturing with his hands, asking her to elaborate. "I'm training to become a paladin, but my friend Lotor told me about you and how his mom had captured you and I wanted to know more about you." The way she said that as simple facts didn't hurt Shiro enough to make him flinch, but he winced at the wording.

"So I'm just... An exhibit?" he asked with a raised eyebrow, and she shook her head.

"No you aren't, but I figured you'd want a bit of company. I respect you for not giving up even after all that's happened, how are you even able to do that?" Acxa asked bluntly, genuine curiosity painting her face as she waited for him to gather his wits and respond.

"I..." Shiro started and then bit his lip for a moment, before continuing. "I have someone that I want to go back to, he's my best friend and we promised we were going to become paladins together," Shiro said, not knowing why he even told this girl he barely knew. Maybe her similar personality to Keith's made her easy to trust? 

After that, the visits became more frequent. Acxa told him bits about herself, while Shiro returned the favor. Sometimes she even brought some Nohrian food to share with him (which he was completely thankful for, especially after the meager food the guard had given him).

 It was a company and subsequent friendship that Shiro needed at that moment, and he would feel grateful to any and every god for it for the rest of his life.

However, one day after Acxa had visited him and asked him about Keith, Shiro dreamt about him.

_ Shiro had known Keith for four years, which meant he also had three years of tradition with him: Every saturday, when dinner is over, they'd sneak out of the orphanage and go to the open fields near by the farms, taking their favorite blanket and some Hoshidan cookies alongside a bit of tea the people from the Ice Tribe always bring to the nuns. _

_ They were lying down, Shiro with his arms on his stomach while Keith had laid his head over his crossed arms, when Shiro noticed a bright light flying through the sky. _

_ "Look!" Shiro said, pointing with his finger where he'd seen the might passing by. "It's a shooting star! We have to make a wish" _

_ "I wish you weren't so cheesy," Keith teased with a smirk on his face, looking at Shiro through his bangs, and Shiro flushed in embarrassment. _

_ "S-shut up!" he claimed with no real bite behind the words. "Besides, if you want the wish to come true, you can't tell me about it!" Shiro pouted and Keith laughed. _

_ "Alright, alright, I'll make my wish, you make yours," Keith acquiesced before closing his eyes. Shiro did the same and asked the stars his second most desired wish: to become a paladin when he grew up. _

_ When he opened his eyes again, he looked at Keith to see him looking up at the sky again with awe, unable to stop staring at the way the stars shone on his violet eyes. Shiro was melting, basking in the beauty of his best friend. However his staring had to stop when Keith gasped and started Shiro out of his dazed state, pointing up to the sky. _

_ "Another one!" Keith exclaimed, and Shiro turned his head at just the right time to see the last of the shooting star before it disappeared. "Do we have to make another wish? Isn't that cheating?" He sounded very serious, and Shiro had to stop himself from sighing dreamily. _

_ "Nope! We can make as many wishes as there are shooting stars, those are the rules," Shiro explained smiling, as Keith looked at him and smiled too, before closing his eyes again. Shiro followed his example, and made his wish, the one thing that his heart always wanted: to marry Keith one day. _

_ Shiro must have been pressing his eyes shut very hard, because Keith touched his shoulder to take him out of his wish-making funk. When Shiro looked at him he saw a concerned look on his eyes, which made Shiro feel very foolish for concentrating on his wish so intensely. _

_ "Sorry," he laughed sheepishly. "I think I was wishing too hard..." _

_ "I get it, Takashi, I've done that sometimes too," Keith said, and smiled again at him, Shiro's face heating up without his consent (why does Shiro have to feel like heating up whenever he saw him smile? He'd been nursing that crush for what he thinks is two years! He should be used to that by now!). _

_ "It's getting late now, Shiro, the farmers are already closing up the farms and getting the animals to sleep" Keith said, pushing himself up and stretching his hand out to Shiro "let's go" he said and Shiro grabbed his hand without hesitation, standing up with his help and stretching his limbs a bit without letting go of Keith (which he accomplished by stretching his hands in front of himself, because Keith was not tall enough to be able to stretch his hands as high as Shiro if he stretches upwards), and then they went back to the orphanage, their hands a point of heat between them in the cool night. _

Shiro woke up unlike other nights. He wasn't sweating, or breathing harshly. He could only cry, the tears already spilling before he even opened his eyes.

"I miss you so much, Keith," he said to an empty cell and sobbed, cradling his face in his arms for a moment, before his tired eyes fell shut again and he was back asleep.

 


End file.
